Stoking Halloween Fears

The Garden of Evil, by Bram Stoker. Originally published in 1911 as The Lair of the White Worm, this novel was reprinted at least twice by American publisher Paperback Library—once in 1969 (above), with art by George Ziel, and previously in 1966 (below), with a cover illustration by an uncredited painter.

Finding a Fortune Is Suddenly Easy

Yesterday, as part of a large Rap Sheet post chock-a-block with news having to do with crime fiction, I included the following item:

It has now been just over 12 years since crime-fictionist Dennis Lynds died. I was reminded of this by a note in Mystery*File from his widow, thriller writer Gayle Lynds, who explains that her husband’s best-remembered protagonist, one-armed New York City gumshoe Dan Fortune, has recently been resurrected in print. She writes: “The entire 17-book series of private eye novels”—which Lynds published under his pseudonym Michael Collins—“are available again, for the first time in Kindle and trade paperback. We hope a new generation of readers will discover Dan, and that longtime fans will enjoy re-reading the classic tales.” Click here to find Amazon’s list of these reprinted works, from Act of Fear (1967) to Cassandra in Red (1993).

I confess, I’ve never been a huge Dan Fortune fan. If my memory is correct, I picked up a copy of the initial entry in that series, the Edgar Award-winning Act of Fear, during my 20s, when I was hungrily expanding my familiarity with the detective fiction genre. And I read two or three more Fortune books in quick succession after that, before becoming distracted by other fictional gumshoes that drew my attention more strongly. Nonetheless, I’m impressed by the fact that—as Gayle Lynds explains in her most recent newsletter—she exhausted “three years of work” trying to return all of the Fortune yarns to print. That’s a substantial commitment to the central body of work her prolific husband of some two decades produced. Readers need no longer haunt used bookstores or search online vendors for vintage copies of those novels.

Still, I prize one Fortune tale I stumbled across at a Half Price Books outlet in Seattle, and promptly purchased. It’s a 1970 Bantam paperback edition of Lynds’ second installment in the series, The Brass Rainbow (1969). The new, trade-size paperback edition that Gayle Lynds has helped bring back to market is stylish and appealing (you can see it on the left), but I prefer my copy—shown atop this post—with its lightly provocative cover art by Mitchell Hooks.

Two-fer Tuesdays: See What Can Go Wrong?

A twice-monthly pairing of book covers that just seem to go together. Click on either of these images to open up an enlargement.



Never Walk Alone, by Rufus King (Popular Library, 1961), featuring cover art by Rudolph Belarski; and She Walks Alone, by Helen McCloy (Dell, 1950), with an illustration by Bill Fleming.

READ MORE: “Mapback Monday: Helen McCloy’s She Walks Alone,”
by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare).

Because I Needed a Woolrich Fix …

Beware the Lady (aka The Bride Wore Black), by Cornell Woolrich (Pyramid, 1953). Illustration by Clarence Doore.

Restless Eyeballing

The Stockade, by Kenneth Lamott (Dell, 1953), with a cover illustration by Griffith Foxley.

Anyone who’s worked with me knows my perfectionist tendencies. I generally hold myself to standards just shy of unreasonable, whether in my news reporting, my interviewing, my book criticism, or my blog designing. When laboring on behalf of print publications, my habitual desire to tinker with my work is restricted by deadlines and the fact that once a magazine or newspaper article (or a book, for that matter) goes to press, I can no longer polish sentences, sharpen my analysis of a subject, or correct errors I failed to spot originally. However, such limitations don’t necessarily exist in the world of Web publishing. Even after a piece is presented in Killer Covers or The Rap Sheet, I can return to it hours, days, weeks, months, or years later to make improvements or additions.

This flexibility has served me well in regard to themed galleries of vintage book fronts I’ve assembled for this page. Over the last couple of years, I have gone back to several early collections of paperback covers—including those having to do with suburban sleaze, summertime sex and scandals, captivating blondes, and showcased legs—and improved their look, beefed up their diversity, or both. This week I finally found the opportunity to enhance and expand a feature I put together a full eight years ago, about Peeping Tom covers.

I haven’t done much to that post in terms of its text, but I have greatly expanded its visual presentation. When the Peeping Tom gallery first went up in October 2009, it comprised a modest 33 book covers; now, with my having spent a few extra years collecting specimens of this breed, it has almost quadrupled in size, boasting 123 fine façades—a new Killer Covers record. There are likely other handsome examples out there waiting to be discovered. For the present, though, I declare this set pretty darn perfect.

Click here to see if you agree.